by Christopher Dunn
Memorial University, Newfoundland
|
Barry Ferguson and Robert Wardhaugh, Manitoba Premiers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre Press, 2010, 449 pages ISBN: 978-0-88977-216-8, $29.95 (paperback)
Now the collection is complete. With similarly named, edited books published on the Premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan six years earlier, the Canadian Plains Research Centre has provided yet another valuable source for scholars and citizens of the prairies. It is a fine idea, skilfully executed. Every serious Manitoban should have this in their collection. Yet, how can one judge this rather new form, since there have been precious few efforts of such scope and scholarly involvement? To be certain, there have been single-author efforts like S. W. Jackman’s Portraits of the Premiers: An Informal History of British Columbia (1969) and a similar effort funded by the Alberta Government. But these have been just that: informal. This is a new, multi-authored, apparently disciplined form.
So one is compelled to ask some serious questions of the material. Several approaches suggest themselves. Is there consistency of purpose or approaches in the coverage of the various premiers? (Are most meant to be reviews of existing biographies of the premiers? Or to complete previously incomplete histories? Or explorations of lives lived in the context of larger theories of the era or place?) If different disciplines are present among the authors, is there consistency or disparity in the approaches to premiers’ lives? Do they review what intellectual forces shaped the premier in question? What can they be said to exemplify about political culture of the place, or even the region? Are aspects of scholarship on the provinces overlooked? If scholarship is overlooked, are there replacement theories that can take their place as superior interpretations? Are authors left out who could have contributed? What is the collection in its entirety supposed to tell us about the place?
Collections these days tend to be uneven, and such is the fate of this book. However, this is meant to be, and should be, an important book. It is not every day that one sets out to review the leadership of the entire history of a province as seen through the lens of its political leaders. Much is to be expected. Therefore the many shortfalls are disappointing. But where it is good, it is very good.
First of all, in terms of consistency of approach, not much is expected of the book, one might conclude, from the introductory chapter. Instead, it is an exercise based in typical Manitoban angst about being bland, average, derivative in culture, and therefore being overlooked. So the aim is to show that Manitoba exhibits distinctiveness, that “conflict rather than consensus, passion rather than blandness, and battles based upon both principle and venality” (xviii) are its markers for the last 140 years. Certainly that is the nature of some aspects of the province’s history. However, someone forgot to tell the contributors that if you are distinctive, you are distinctive from something. There is no other “something” in the chapters. There are few if any external comparisons.
It would have been better if there had been a series of interpretive propositions of the province, to be proved or disproved. Or a commitment to plumb the contents of the book to derive some new interpretations of the history. (“Distinctiveness” is a slim reed to build on: every snowflake is distinct from others, but what does that tell us?) Or a conclusion that took the evidence offered by the different authors and synthesized it into such propositions. Instead there is no conclusion and there are no propositions to be explored (except by a few authors rising to the occasion).
Part of the problem is the nature of the editorship. Here one has two historians dealing with a province where most of the interesting insights on it—at least recently—have been provided by political scientists. Missing is the exploration of such propositions as these: that the fragment thesis, which deals with the importance of initial immigration patterns, is relevant to Manitoba (Nelson Wiseman is dismissed with one line on the first page of the Introduction); or, as John Wilson would say, that provincial politics and the party system reflect the relative stage of economic development, with “pre-industrials” emphasizing linguistic and ethnic politics, industrialized provinces reflecting class politics; or that Manitoba, like its counterparts, has been engaged in a pattern of what Cairns and others called “province-building” that altered its selfimage and its relationship with the federal government; or that, much as S. J. R. Noel had suggested, some societies (Manitoba included) exhibited various stages of patronclient relationships. There are others. It might be retorted that this was a study of premiers, not patterns. Yet the editors themselves link the successes of the premiers to their accommodation or ignoring of predominant socioeconomic- geographic divisions (p. xvii), so there is some social theorization implied, just not made explicit.
It is often said that “history is just one damned thing after another.” Too many of the articles fit this stereotype, unfortunately. One can contrast the chapters on Campbell and Doer which do, with those on Roblin and Schreyer which take pains by contrast to offer context, background and significance of the premier in question.
Premiers’ backgrounds are not accorded much importance. This could be a mistake. Thomas Greenway, part of the Ontario fragment transported to Manitoba, represents its triumphal Protestantism and ends French language and Roman Catholic institutional status. It is no accident that it is an “Ontarian” Norris who ends French privileges in 1916, or a Campbell with Ontarian parents who reappears on the political scene in 1983 to join the forces aligned against the expansion of French rights. However, occasionally background is accorded an important role, as in the Norquay chapter.
Emphasis on background could also lead to thinking in terms of what Neustadt and May in Thinking in Time refer to as “placement.” Instead of “undifferentiated rationality,” or the projection onto others of the meanings of things in their own heads, analysts should use “placement,” i.e., placing the historical figure against large historical events that may have moulded current views, and determining where the figure “sat” (experienced or thought) before undertaking their major tests of their time in office. The context, nationally and internationally, could be accorded more importance. Thus we can see Rodmond Roblin as Manitoba’s Teddy Roosevelt, or T. C. Norris as the province’s Woodrow Wilson.
There are some surprising gaps. The author of the Norris chapter has almost nothing to say about the watershed event of 20th-century Manitoba, the Winnipeg General Strike, or for that matter, the rise of labour radicalism. Also overlooked by him and several others, is the changing demographic face of the province, and its effects. The Bracken chapter says little about the longterm effects of the coalition system on political parties, democratic discourse or public services, all of which were deeply affected for a quarter of the province’s history. The toll of the Depression makes little appearance. The Roblin period stresses “modernization” but underplays the degree to which it was a modernization mitigated by conservative forces; the Metro Winnipeg reform, for example, was watered down from the original vision that Roblin and planners had for it, so that little change in the municipal status quo was evident. Little effort is given to sussing out the ideological contours of each premier’s thought. Often the long-term impact of the premier is not explored.
Yet these are the quibbles of an academic. They will not outlast the effect of the book, which will be profound, as with the others in this series. At last there exists a book which is readable and accessible to high school, university and lay readers. A province with a history that is deep and dramatic finally has coverage that is modern and complete. The material resources needed for further research on Manitoba history are assembled in one project. Longforgotten premiers finally live again on the printed page. A noble effort, worthy of emulation in other provinces.
Page revised: 2 January 2017
